Rowan Nighthollow once carried the falcons of a great house on his wrist. Now the house called him a beast, stripped his title, and threw him into the wet dark of the forest. He crouched over a shallow stream and stared at his own hands. Beneath the velvet gloves, his fingers ended in black claws. He had not been born this way. Someone had made it look like he had. He knew the truth. On the night the lord fell ill, Rowan had found a strange plant pressed into the man's wine. He remembered its hollow, glass-like stems and its pale, floating blossoms. He had pulled the same plant from the lord's cup and hidden it in his glove. Then the guards seized him, and the poison twisted his hands before the whole court. They saw claws and called him a monster. No one asked what had caused them. Rowan had run. But he had kept the flower. Now he needed proof, or his word meant nothing. A beast's plea would only make the court laugh. He drew the wilted orchid from his glove. Its stems were still hollow. He held one to the light and squeezed. A drop of clear sap ran onto his claw and the skin around it thickened, hardening like his own cursed fingers. The plant itself was the poison. The plant itself was the proof. But proof was useless in his hand alone. He needed a witness the court could not dismiss. He walked deeper into the trees until he found the shrine. It stood in a clearing beneath the antlers of a dark elk that grazed without fear. On a stone pedestal rested a falcon cast in bronze, green and pitted with age. Rowan knew it. It was the mark of the old keeper of the royal mews, the one man who logged every plant, every poison, every death in the house's ledgers. The keeper still lived. He tended this shrine. Rowan set the orchid at the falcon's clawed feet and waited. The old keeper came at dusk, bent and slow. He saw the flower and stopped. His face went white. "Ghost-stem," he whispered. "I warned them. I told them it makes claws of any man." Rowan stepped from the shadow. The keeper flinched, then looked at Rowan's hands, then at the flower, and understood. "You wrote it down," Rowan growled. "In the ledger. The night the lord fell." The keeper nodded slowly. "I did. And they burned that page." He met Rowan's golden eyes. "But I remember every word. And I am not afraid to say it to their faces." Rowan closed his clawed hand around the bronze falcon. He had his proof now, and a living voice to speak it. Yet the keeper's words rang in his skull. Someone in the house had ordered the ledger burned. Someone had wanted Rowan gone. To clear his name, he would have to name that person first.

The keeper's promise sat heavy in Rowan's chest. A witness could speak of poison and a burned page. But the court would ask one question Rowan could not answer: who lit the fire? Without a name, the keeper's voice was only breath. Rowan turned the wilted orchid in his claws and searched it for an answer. He held a hollow stem to the last light. Inside the clear tube, something dark clung to the wall. He squeezed. A bead of sap ran out, and with it a smear of gray. Ash. The plant had been near flame after it was cut. Someone had burned it, or burned the page beside it, and the stem had drunk the smoke. Rowan brought the ash to his nose. It carried a sweet, oily scent he knew. Not woodsmoke. Tallow, and under it, myrrh. The house burned that costly incense in only one place: the lord's private chapel. The keeper had said the ledger died by an insider's order. Now the ash named the room. He carried the orchid back to the shrine. The keeper knelt at the bronze falcon, cleaning its pitted feet. Rowan held the stem close to the old man's face. "Smell this," Rowan growled. "Tell me what burned my page." The keeper breathed in. His hands went still. "Myrrh and tallow." His voice dropped. "Chapel incense. No servant enters there. Only the lord's household priest keeps the key." Rowan's claws tightened on the stem. "The priest." "He logged the poisons with me, once," the keeper said. "He knew ghost-stem. He knew the page. And he had the fire." The old man looked up, afraid now. "If I name him to the court, he will call me a liar. His word outranks mine." "Then we bring more than words." Rowan set the orchid at the falcon's feet. "The ash is in the stem. Any keeper of poisons can draw it out and match it to the chapel censer. Your ledgers list what burns in that room. Yours against his, with the plant between you." The keeper stared at the pale blossoms. Slowly he nodded. "It could be shown. It could be matched." He pressed a hand to the bronze. "I will swear to the smell. I will bring my old logs." Rowan had his answer. The ash led to one room, one key, one man. He knew now whose hand had burned his name to nothing. But knowing was not proving. The priest still held his post inside the great house, behind its walls and its guards. To match the censer, Rowan had to reach it. He wrapped the orchid in cloth and slid it into his glove. The next fire he faced would be the one he walked into himself.